In recent years, Internet usage and data services using the Internet from Smartphones have dramatically increased and with that, traffic from the Smartphones increased. This abrupt increase in the traffic has reduced the available bandwidth of mobile operator network. Traffic offloading is a technology to veer traffic from U-plane directly to the Internet from long term evolution (LTE) base stations (e.g., an evolved NodeB (eNB)). There are at least two traffic offload technologies: local IP access (LIPA) and selected IP traffic offload (SIPTO).
LIPA is used in LTE 3GPP Rel-10 as a function allowing the User Equipment (UE) connected via a Home eNodeB (HeNB) to access other IP capable entities in the same residential/enterprise IP network without the user plane traversing the mobile operator's core network. The LIPA function is realized by collocating a Local Gateway (L-GW) function, which is a subset of the PDN Gateway function, with the HeNB. The user plane traffic is forwarded directly between the HeNB and its collocated L-GW function, without traversing the core network. The LIPA function is specified in 3GPP TS 23.401.
SIPTO is used in a 3GPP Rel-10 as a function allowing an operator to offload certain types of traffic at a network node residing close to user equipment's (UE's) current location. SIPTO is offloaded at a PDN Gateway function that resides in the mobile operator's core network.
Thus, there is a need to resolve the problem of available bandwidth in LTE networks by using traffic offload technology.